Bonjour Shelley and others,
CAST OF REGULAR CHARACTERS
I study economics at university. I have a tendency to apply economic principles to all aspects of my life which is indicative of the fact that it’s pretty miraculous that I have any friends outside my economics buddies.
In truth, I’m no economist. I mainly spend my time analysing the efficiency and decision making processes of things that have nothing to do with my study. A large part of my motivation to start this blog was in order to provide myself with further opportunities to apply economics to irrelevant situations. Here, I drew a graph to demonstrate the inverse nature of the relationship between the usefulness of economics to my life and the amount of economics applied.
It’s a negative relationship. Sigh.
Something that occurs to economies from time to time is that there is a huge shock to productive capacity. An example would be if there was an enormous shortage of peaches because of soaring fruit fly levels because someone didn’t throw out their fruit when they saw this sign.
The minuscule amount of now extremely expensive peaches sadly renders the Australian workforce so weak and miserable that they are unable to work at the same level of capacity. Here I drew you another graph.
Notice that at first the economy is in a stable equilibrium before the shock. Over time it ends up in equilibrium again. So things go from being normal to a new normal. You will notice; however, that the new normal is worse because there is less output and it’s more expensive. There is now less stuff in the economy and that stuff is more expensive. People are worse off and this is evidence that sometimes things change from normal to a new, shitter normal.
Now that I have spent some time discussing economics, I shall apply this principle to something completely and totally unrelated to my studies. Fear not, you won’t learn anything important, I know that you were worried.
I recently hurt my back. Turns out that you need your back to do just about everything so when I went to the doctor she told me to “avoid sitting, running, twisting, carrying anything, driving and jumping.” Lying down and being perfectly still was acceptable though, I was pleased to hear.
Normally when people prolapse a disc, they feel it go. For example, a person will be mid-wrestle with that rancor monster that lives in a cage below Jabba the Hut’s torture arena and suddenly feel it pop. I can’t pinpoint when I actually hurt it which was weird so now when people ask me how I hurt my bad I happily tell them that it was a ‘ninjury’.
The doctor seemed to find it hard to believe that I was a ninja (I know… weird, right?). So she asked me if I could think of anything at all that could have resulted in me hurting my back.
I couldn’t.
I’m not a doctor but this is how a prolapsed disc works as I understand it:
Firstly, something changes for no reason.
Secondly, this change has an effect.
I hurt my back six months ago and I think that it’s back to normal but it’s a new, shittier normal. My leg is pretty numb except for three of my toes which are for some reason really super sensitive.
You see because the nerves are blinded by inflammation, my brain can’t communicate with my right leg very well.
One of the consequences of this new normal is that I can’t do the things that I used to enjoy so easily. When I say the things I enjoy, I don’t mean sky-diving or Olympic sex sessions, I mean things like sitting, running, twisting, carrying anything, driving and jumping. It does make my life a little more interesting because I was pretty clumsy before so now my clumsiness has reached new and impressive heights.
Even though this upsets me, which is does, I am the first to admit that it is funny when people fall over. My friend Gigi and I were in Canberra early last year staying with a friend for a couple of days. Gigi was sitting on a chair drinking a glass of wine chatting to me. She decided to twist her legs around the chair which in hindsight was not really a sensible idea.
Naturally she fell off. Now this shouldn’t be funny. She was holding a glass which of course smashed everywhere. She could have been injured from the fall or by broken glass. When she sat up she looked a little dazed and said that she wasn’t feeling well. Like I said, not funny. Except that it was a little bit funny.
People falling over is a little bit funny.
When I was in year nine, my friends Marsha and Anche and I were walking along grassy area at our school’s rural campus when Marsha fell over for no particular reason. It was a pretty slow fall so we had time to enjoy it. Anche said it looked like a bad Backstreet Boys dance move. Marsha jumped up and did a pirouette and laughed it off but possibly went home to cry and apply band-aids later.
I guess over time my back may return to the original, pre-peach shortage better normal but for now I must tolerate having to fall over even more than I usually do but it’s OK because last I heard Shelley’s OK.
Love,
Elle.
Note: I wrote this post a little while ago (before school holidays).
P.S. Right now there is a swimming carnival happening at the public swimming pool that is located mere metres away from my house and all the children are screaming “We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve got spirit, how ‘bout you?” and I really want to go over there and scream “FUCK NO!”. Then it occurred to me that doing something as proactive as screaming at children is pretty spirited so it would be oxymoronic for me to say anything. So I decided that it was best to share it with you, this way I can make the comment and still appear as cynical as ever.
